Mulege and Southbound Again.

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By Lowell | May 18, 2018 | Category Baja 2018

 

Wednesday May 16th

We find winds out of the north building to 15 as we sail into the Bahia Conception channel heading north to Mulege. 3 tacks and we make Mulege, 3 hours later. Seas begin to build as we slip in to the river channel at high tide giving us a very calm anchorage. We’re a little late for lunch but a quick call to our favorite taxi driver “Nacho” gets us to town quickly.  Soon, Nacho arrives on the dock near us to take in to town 2 miles up river.

 

Driving in to town we see they are working dredging the river channel. It’s good to see some improvements on an area that has been hit so hard by hurricane flooding. Our first stop is Equiplies our favorite Mex restaurant . Today it was seafood soup with even some lobster as a special treat and of course their excellent margs.

 

Rick being Rick and the salesmen added a nice hat to make him even more goofy. As usual the afternoon temp is a bit warn and we take refuse at Las Casitas for a cold beer while we wait for Claudia open her dive shop.

 

Heading to dinner our anchorage is a favorite fishing spot along with lots of exercisers / partiers.

 

El Patron was open and under construction. They need to rebuild their plywood wall and plastic window. We have waterfront table with open restaurant behind us.

 

Thursday May 17th

We’re just coming off a new moon and low tide exposes the shallow bottom just off the launch ramp. We can’t navigate any further up river. The ramp is on the north shore. All the fishermen launch from the south shore where the channel is much deeper but we stay north to stay away from the traffic area. Hauling anchor 9ish we find we are actually touching the bottom but quickly side free. We’re off for San Juanico 42 miles south.

Forecast is for NW winds which we never saw. South winds out of Conception gave us a good push until we cleared Punta Conception. SE winds filled out of the SE as we around Punta Conception and slowly shifted to East giving us a beat to wind with a motor kicker that pretty much prevailed for the day. Just north of Punta Palpito a large school of pilot whales stopped by for a visit. We took some good video as they played with the boat for  a while. Arriving near the San Juanico bay we experience the best jumping bat ray show ever. It was crazy, with as many 6 or 8 in the air at once, they have two types of jumps a belly flop and a back flip.  We enjoy both immensely. The noise from them splashing on their landing when on well after dark. We only guessed it must have been mating season and either the males were impressing the ladies or the ladies were running from the gents.

Pulling into Juanico 5ish, we had a guess on how many boats would be there. Dave had it a 6 when you included Gato Loco.

 

As you can see things were totally calm in our anchorage. I’m still trying to master the new paddle board. It seems to want to dump me when least expecting it. It feels good to be this close to our Loreto destination, however Dave and Rick are beginning feel the end of their leg. Especially Dave who has been on for 2 weeks this Saturday. Awesome steak dinner and we enjoyed a cool evening forcing me to close my hatch.

 

Friday morning, before sunrise birds and fish are going crazy feeding all around us. Cool but I’m going back to bed for a while.

 

 

 

Nice lazy morning with only 20 mile on down to Loreto. Everybody is in the cleaning and maintenance mode, perfect to get Gato Loco in ship shape for the Rally next week. Favorable winds finally entice us out of the anchorage around 10. We’re off for Loreto and hopefully can anchor in front and enjoy the evening in town.

 

All good on Gato Loco

 

Until the next Update

 

 

 

 

Rick on a early morning paddle cruise